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MRAK Almanac: Fundraisers, health fairs, book signings

Suzanne Downing
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MRAK Almanac: Fundraisers, health fairs, book signings

9/6: Alaska Republicans hold a fundraiser with beer, brats and Congressman Don Young. Must Read Alaska’s  will be there, at the home of Cynthia and Ken Henry, Anchorage hosts. See flyer above.

9/6: Book signing in Juneau at Rainy Retreat Books for MaryLou Spartz and John Greely’s new book on the “Princess Sophia, Disaster on our Doorstep.” Starts at 5 pm.

9/7: Fairbanks Families Partnership free Health Fair brought to you by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, 11 am – 3pm Pioneer Park.

9/7: The Cape Fox Corporation 46th Annual Meeting of Shareholders starts at noon at the Ted Ferry Civic Center in Ketchikan. The Native corporation has about 300 shareholders.

9/7-8: The 55th Annual Parade of Homes in Anchorage, with dozens of homes from local builders open to the public, Saturday 10 am – 6 pm and Sunday 12-6 pm. Information here.

9/8: Hobo Jim in concert with a fundraiser to benefit the Knik Museum, from 1-3 pm, at the museum, 13.9 Knik Goose Bay Road. This is a fun event for the whole family. While you’re there, you can explore the Knik Museum and learn about the history of a community that predated Anchorage, Wasilla, and Palmer. Raffle tickets will be sold with prizes including Mahay Jetboat Adventures, and Talkeetna Air Taxi.

9/ 10-13: International gathering of sovereign wealth funds meets in Juneau, with representatives from more than 30 nations. Environmental protesters are planning to rally to dissuade these financial experts from investing in fossil fuel.

 

 

Alaska Life Hack: Duck, moose season starts with a bang

Suzanne Downing
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4
Alaska Life Hack: Duck, moose season starts with a bang

BUT HUNTERS ARE GETTING OLDER, AND THAT’S A PROBLEM

Waterfowl hunting season in Alaska started a half hour before sunrise on Sunday, which meant some residents of the Oceanview neighborhood in Anchorage were awakened by shotgun fire coming from the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, which is Anchorage’s urban waterfowl hunting grounds.

Down in Juneau, the the Mendenhall Wildlife Refuge opened for youth hunters age 16 and under, accompanied by an adult for the first two days of waterfowl hunting season.

Moose season also started in some places on Sept. 1.

Units 7 and 15 on the Kenai now require moose hunters to take a brief orientation class online before heading out in search of their freezer meat. This new requirement is comprised of a set of short videos and a 19-question quiz. It will soon be required statewide, but for Units 7 and 15, you’ll need to have your certificate on your person while hunting this season. Alaska Fish and Game want to be sure you can really count the tines on a moose’s head.

WHERE ARE ALL THE YOUNG PEOPLE?

These days, fewer and fewer youth are participating in hunting, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey that says while 14 percent of Americans age 16 and under have fished, only 4 percent have hunted.

On the other hand, we’re raising a nation of wildlife watchers: 34 percent of those 16 and under who were surveyed said they participated in watching wildlife. As expected, those living in metropolitan areas hunt the least, while those in rural America hunt the most.

The participation rate in hunting increases as people age, until they hit 65, and then it starts to decline.

In 2016, the breakdown in the ages of hunters was:

  • 3 percent, ages 16 and 17.
  • 4 percent, ages 18-44.
  • 6 percent, ages 45-64.
  • 4 percent, ages 65-75.
  • 2 percent of 75 and over.

And therein lies the problem.

Baby boomers, who make up the largest cohort of hunters, are aging out of the sport. In a few years, many of them will no longer be actively buying permits and hunting, and the youngsters of America are not being raised to fill the duck blinds.

Hunting writers say that not only could the overall hunting ranks plunge by 30 percent, the money that hunters supply in the way of licenses and tags is a critical part of wildlife and game management. Those funds could dry up.

Hunters pay more than 83 percent of the game management in Alaska, with Pittman-Robertson funds coming from taxes on ammo and hunting licenses, and equipment for hunting. The money comes back to Alaska for game management. “Dingle-Johnson” is the angler tax, and that’s how Alaska pays for sport fishing management, access, trail improvement, disabled access and more. Those funds are the piggy banks — state dollars held in reserve by the federal government that Alaska Department of Fish and Game draws on.

In other words, without young people taking up the sport, hunting in America may be in a death spiral.

[Read more on this topic at Outdoor Life: Why we are losing hunters and how to fix it.]

Will hunting go the way of Bristol Bay salmon, an industry that is now been largely taken over by Washington State? If a new generation doesn’t step up and hunt, Alaska’s moose will still need to be harvested, and more out-of-state permits may be sold.

“Hunt with your kids, not for them,” says the Safari Club Educational Foundation. And that’s even more important than ever for Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials because of this fact: If Alaskans are not recruiting and retaining license holders, they won’t have anyone to proxy hunt — or fish — for them when they get old.

Unionizing temporary campaign jobs? It’s now a thing

Suzanne Downing
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11
Unionizing temporary campaign jobs? It’s now a thing

ALASKA DEMOCRATS SEEM TO FAVOR BIG-UNION ELIZABETH WARREN

In a Labor Day announcement, Al Gross, candidate for U.S. Senate on the Democratic ticket (as an “independent”), announced his campaign is unionizing under the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. The 30-second Facebook announcement sounded like an April Fool’s joke, but Gross appeared sincere.

This, after a career as a high-flying surgeon, raised questions about his campaign judgment and priorities, since his campaign seems to be a one-man operation, with wife, kids, and a contractor or two. It doesn’t quite pass the giggle test. But as a dark horse, if he’s looking for some coattails in Alaska, maybe the unions will bite on this gimmick. For now, however, the unionizing of his family may have to do.

Unionizing campaign staff is a thing with Democrats in 2019. All the big “Dem-Sens” have done it: Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has the largest unionized campaign staff of the pack, at over 200 paid staffers.

This is a new era for unions, and if Warren keeps ascending, she could be in a good spot with the major unions backing her for the Democratic nomination.

But campaign jobs are notoriously unstable. No only are campaign workers extremely temporary, they are perhaps the most exempt workers of all — they only last until the money runs out, or there’s a win, or until the campaign implodes because of other dynamics. And most campaign workers are volunteers who work for paid staffers and who might get alienated by their union overlords.

Working in a political campaign is not a cookie cutter experience. Every campaign must adjust and adapt to a constantly changing political and fiscal landscape. A scandal may erupt. A person may not get elevated in the campaign because they haven’t won the trust of the candidate. People typically take sick leave when they can, and vacations when the campaigns come to a close.

Other campaigns are run by contractors with expertise in the area and who have other clients and campaigns they are managing.

WHO DO ALASKA DEMOCRATS FAVOR? 

At the straw poll at the Alaska State Fair booth of the Mat-Su Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, with the big union campaign staff, was far and away the favorite candidate of the approximately 600 participants in the poll. Here’s the breakdown of the poll after the fair closed on Monday:

  • Warren: 35.2 percent
  • Sanders: 18.5 percent
  • Buttigieg: 13.3 percent
  • Biden: 9.6 percent
  • Harris: 9.6
  • Yang: 7.3 percent
  • O’Rourke: 2.4 percent.

Get your egg-sucking leech out: Kenai River opens at Cooper Landing for boating, fishing

Suzanne Downing
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Get your egg-sucking leech out: Kenai River opens at Cooper Landing for boating, fishing

Part of the Kenai River will be reopened for boating Wednesday from 6 am to 6 pm, after recent rain dampened fire activity and lowered the potential for conflict between boaters and local residents who were staging for possible evacuation.

The river will be open to boaters from the Cooper Landing state boat launch to Sportsman’s Landing.

The river will remain closed to boating from Sportsman’s Landing to Skilak Lake to reduce traffic on roads and make it easier to quickly deploy firefighters and resources in fighting wildfires on the Kenai Peninsula, officials said.

For the section of the river that is open, drift boats are popular, as are rafts with rowing frames. Lure fishing for rainbow trout is catch-and-release on the upper Kenai. The fish haven’t seen a lure for two weeks during the fire, and are eating salmon roe; the three flies that will likely work will be any egg pattern, egg-sucking leech, and flesh flies, according to Must Read Alaska’s sportfishing adviser.

The Cooper Landing School will also be open on Wednesday, Sept. 4.

Fire danger has decreased over much of the Kenai Peninsula, but residents and visitors should remain aware and prepared for changing conditions. For statewide fire information, visit the AICC website at https://fire.ak.blm.gov/ or http://www.akfireinfo.com.

Cold case arrest in Shelley Connolly murder

Suzanne Downing
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0
Cold case arrest in Shelley Connolly murder

Alaska State Troopers said 62-year-old former Alaskan Donald F. McQuade was arrested in Oregon in connection with the death of Shelley Connolly in 1978.

Back in 1978, Connolly was found sexually assaulted and beaten, dead along the railroad tracks. She had been dragged behind a vehicle, and then dumped along the tracks near Beluga Point, Mile 109 of the Seward Highway. Her death was determined to be due to a blunt blow to her abdomen, which caused a lacerated liver.

The teenager had been seen in the parking lot of Chikoot Charlie’s in Spenard earlier that day, and later at Leroy’s Diner. According to news reports from that time, her broken fingernails and debris showed she had fought to try to climb out of the ditch after being raped and dragged.

Oregon police arrested McQuade without incident on Friday. Based on DNA technology not available at the time of Connolly’s death, McQuade has been charged with Connolly’s murder.

Investigators made the connection earlier this year: DNA evidence pointed to a set of brothers, and they narrowed their search down to McQuade after finding he had been in Alaska during the time of the murder.

At the request of the Cold Case Unit, the Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory developed a DNA profile of an unknown male, based on biological evidence collected during the autopsy. No match was generated from the DNA, which was loaded into the CODIS system in 2003. But this year, investigators submitted the material to Parabon Nanolabs, and using genetic technology, the lab was able to link the DNA to McQuade, who was 21 at the time of the girl’s death and living in Anchorage.

“Investigators have spent years analyzing this case looking for a viable lead. I have an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction that all that work has paid off,” said Investigator Randy McPherron of the Alaska State Trooper’s Cold Case Unite. “More than anything, I am relieved to be able to provide Shelley’s friends and family a sense of justice and the knowledge that Shelley was more than a name on an unsolved homicide sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere. Every single victim matters to us.”

Walmart gets out of gun and ammo business

Suzanne Downing
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26
Walmart gets out of gun and ammo business

Walmart on Tuesday announced it will stop selling handguns in Alaska, the only state where it still sells them. The decision is in response to the mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas Walmart a month ago that left 20 people dead.

America’s largest retailer said that nationwide it would also stop selling handgun ammunition and “short-barrel rifle ammunition,” such as .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber. It will sell off all of its inventory first and is asking customers to no longer open carry in the Walmart and Sam’s Club stores around the country, even if state law permits it.

Walmart will continue to sell long-barrel deer rifles, shotguns, and the ammunition for those firearms.

Walmart has 9 stores in Alaska, according to its website, including nine super centers, and two discount stores.

Formerly with AK Dems, Jay Parmley back in South Carolina

Suzanne Downing
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10
Formerly with AK Dems, Jay Parmley back in South Carolina

Jay Parmley, who was executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party for 2-1/2 years, has been rehired by South Carolina Democrats. Parmley left Alaska this summer, and at the time said he was moving to Florida with his husband and mother-in-law.

Parmley is from Oklahoma, but has worked in several states for the Democratic Party and its subunits.

In 2012, he resigned his North Carolina post after a former male staffer accused him of sexual harassment — showing him a photo of a penis — and unwanted physical advances. The employee later sued, saying he was fired because he blew the whistle on Parmley.

[Read: NC Democratic Party ex-staffer sues over sexual harassment]

About the same timeframe, Parmley’s ex-girlfriend accused him of infecting her with HIV.

Even with that baggage, Richland County, SC Democrats hired Parmley in 2012. In 2016, Parmley was then whisked away by the Alaska Democratic Party, where he has been the ED for three years; he followed former Alaska Rep. Kay Brown in that role.

Now he’s back with the South Carolina Democratic Party, where he will help the 2020 efforts to upset U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. It’s also a pivotal election year for the presidency, although South Carolina has historically been a red state. There is no gubernatorial election in South Carolina in 2020.

[Read: NC Democratic Party ex-staffer sues over sexual harassment]

In Parmley’s spot in Alaska, the Alaska Democratic Party has hired a former Mark Begich staffer, Lindsey Kavanaugh.

[Read: Road to White House: AK Democrats hire new executive director]

MRAK Almanac: Federalist Society speaker on separation of powers

Suzanne Downing
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1
MRAK Almanac: Federalist Society speaker on separation of powers

9/3: Federalist Society: Why Separation of Powers Matters, with Attorney General Kevin Clarkson and Professor Emeritus John Baker, Louisiana State University. Captain Cook Hotel Quarterdeck, 5 pm. $30 nonmembers, $25 members.

9/3: Kenai Borough Assembly Meeting, 6 pm. The invocation will be offered by Greg Madden on behalf of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Pastafarians. Meeting info here.

9/3: Ketchikan Borough Assembly meeting, 5-8 pm, Assembly Chambers, 1900 First Avenue. Agenda includes approval of a marijuana cultivation and a marijuana production facility, and the legislative priorities for 2021. Agenda is here.

9/4: Kenai City Council Meeting, 6 pm, Kenai City Council Chambers. Among items” Substitute Ordinance No. 3083-2019 – Amending Kenai Municipal Code 14.20.175 – Adult Businesses, To Increase The Buffer Distances Between Adult Businesses And Sensitive Uses From 500 Feet To 1000 Feet And Define Sensitive Uses and Amend Kenai Municipal Code 14.22.010 – Land Use Table, to Add Adult Businesses.

9/5: Ketchikan City Council meeting, 7-10 pm, City Hall, 334 Front Street. Discussion includes the city’s legislative priority draft list for FY 2021: 7a6 – FY 2021 Community Priority List. Agenda is here.

9/5: Fairbanks North Star Borough Committee of the Whole work session. Agenda here.

9/6: Juneau ribbon cutting at the New Pederson Hill Subdivision Phase 1, 12:30-1:30 pm, 10160 Glacier Highway.

9/7: City of Soldotna public hearing on a proposed annexation of land, 2 pm at Soldotna High School Auditorium. The City of Soldotna intends to file an annexation petition with the Local Boundary Commission. The territory proposed for annexation consists of about 3.8 square miles of land, and includes areas adjacent to the existing city boundaries as shown on the map at this link.

9/9: Anchorage Planning Commission, 6:30 pm at Loussac Library Assembly Chambers. Public hearing on master plan for Town Square Park.

9/9: Fairbanks City Council meeting, 6:30 pm, City Hall.

9/10: Wrangell Borough Assembly Meeting, 7 pm.

9/10: Haines Borough Assembly meeting, 6:30 pm, Assembly Chambers.

9/10: Petersburg Planning Commission, noon, Municipal Building

9/11: Petersburg local absentee voting between now and Sept. 30 upstairs in the Municipal Building, 8 am-4:30 pm. Deadline to absentee vote is Sept. 30, 12 pm.
Local Absentee Voting

9/12: University of Alaska Board of Regents meet.

9/16: Juneau Assembly meeting, 7-11 pm, City Hall.

UAF prior reductions mean only finding $7.5 million more

Suzanne Downing
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11
UAF prior reductions mean only finding $7.5 million more

After the final budget was signed by Gov. Michael Dunleavy on Aug. 19, the University of Alaska System began the process of distributing University System President Jim Johnson’s general guidance for achieving the $25 million system-wide reduction.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks’ reduction target is $17 million. According to UAF Chancellor Dan White, his campus had already achieved $9.5 million in reductions, and so must only find an additional $7.5 million.

White detailed the approach he plans to take at UAF:

  • 10% GF Reduction – $9.5 million
    • This reduction was already proposed during the continuation budgeting processing for FY20 and included a multitude of unit reductions within procurement, services, travel and reduced staffing.
  • Remaining reduction needed – $7.5 million
  • Facilities and Administration – $2.5 million
    • Through statewide consolidations of central university administration, the system office will find $5 million in savings and portions will be attributed to the universities. UAF is anticipating being able to count $2.5 million from these savings.
    • Reduce $2.5 million in facility maintenance expenses.
  • Academic Program & Student Services – $1.3 million
    • Expedited program review of academic programs and general units will begin this fall 2019 at the system level. White estimates that some funds will be saved through potential reduction of faculty contracts within eliminated programs but due to teach-out requirements, one-time bridge funding will be required.
  • Research – $700,000
    • Application of an unallocated reduction will be applied to units supporting organized research. The purpose of the unallocated reduction is to allow unit leaders to make the best choices for their units.
  • Public Service – $500,000

To meet the new reduction, UAF will use one-time bridge funding where possible. Johnsen’s memo asked UAF to protect funds within Advancement functions (Fundraising-Development, University Relations, Alumni) and Title IX.

With the $9.5 million already cut and the $7.5 million yet to go, the University of Fairbanks will see a $17 million reduction, the most of any campus. For UAF the entire budget cut will be generally allocated thus:

  • Administration – $7.8 million
  • Academic programs & Student Services – $6.2 million
  • Research – $1.7 million
  • Public Service – $1.2 million

The next step is approval of the budget distribution plan by the Board of Regents on September 12.

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